This is what I did in English class.
after-watching-a-movie-or-listening-to-a-tedtalk-or-reading-a-piece-of-literature-1ll96u4
Month: September 2016
Harrison Chart
This is what my partner and I did after reading the short story “Harrison Bergeron.”
Exponential Graph
Today in math, each group were assigned to graph an exponential equation.
Our group had to graph the equation 
.
We first made a table of values with x values from -10 to 10, then found the y values and plotted the points. We connected the points and the graph looked like this.
It had a curved line shaped as ‘L’ and most of the y values were closed to zero. The distance between the points was far when the x was negative, and the distance was short when the x was positive. This is because, when x is a negative number, y decreases rapidy. However, when x is a positive number, y decreases slowly. Even though it gets smaller and smaller, y never becomes zero.
After our group finished, we compared each other graphs with group 8. This is what their graph looked liked. 
Their equation was 
. The equation was the same except they had an negative exponent. Therefore, their graph is a reflection on the y-axis. If our graph looked like an ‘L’, group 8’s graph was the appearence of the opposite of ‘L’.
From this activity, I could easily understand integral exponents by looking at an visual graph of how the numbers are related. For example, (1/2)^3 is 1/8 while (1/2)^-3 is 8.
Building Understanding
This is what I did in English class.
after-watching-a-movie-or-listening-to-a-tedtalk-or-reading-a-piece-of-literature-1ll96u4
Sam the Athlete
Was it proper for Sam to continue wearing skirts?
Everybody should be able to do something they are passionate about without having to be restricted by gender. The book “Sam the Athlete” is written by Stuart McLean. It is about a boy named Sam, who faces problems that are caused by his sexuality. He is placed in a team of girls and faces the problem of whether or not he should wear the skirt. Eventually, he decided to continue wearing the skirt. He really likes sports and his dream is to be an athlete. He has tried several sports such as soccer, baseball, curling, and hockey. Unfortunately, he wasn’t good at any of them and couldn’t fit in to the team. One day, he spotted a poster about a try-out for field hockey. This he thought was “the reckless faith of the hopeless, was the sport he had been looking for all his life”(66). He went there right away and found out that field hockey was the sport that he is actually good at. He felt so great to hear compliments from the coach, but he soon found out that the team was for girls when the coach gave them the skirts to wear. He didn’t know that the players were girls before because everybody was wearing a helmets. He could have just sneaked out of the team but instead, “Sam went home and shaved his legs” (68).He enjoys the sport and most of all, the compliments that he got made it a major reason for him to disguise himself as a girl. It was his first time to feel being a part of a team. Sam decided to live a lie just to fit in with other girls and to do what he loved. Soon, his mom had found out that the team is a co-ed. Sam were able to wear shorts and stop pretending to be a girl. Surprisingly, he said he loves to wear the skirt and he will keep wearing it. It was a good decision because he became liking the skirt and it was the most comfortable clothes for him. Sam should do what ever he would like, despite of sexual discrimination. He doesn’t have to follow how the society is structured. He can do something different and be confident of what he likes to do. Eventually, everyone in the team got to know that Sam was a boy and now it was his choice to wear or not. He didn’t have to lie that he was a boy anymore, and he wore what he liked. Therefore, Sam made a good decision on continuing to wear the skirt. It is important to do what he pleases him.
Exponents Review
Today in math, we formed in to groups and answered some questions to review exponents that we learned from grade 9.
Children’s Books Pathways to a Theme
Our English class learned about inquiry, and we did an activity that was reading children’s books and filling out some questions.
We read two books : ‘The Name Jar’ written by Yanksook Choi & ‘Ish’ written by Peter Reynold
Irrational number other than Pi
When people are asked to think of one irrational number, the most of them would probably say ‘pi’. However I have found out there are more interesting irrational numbers that were unfamiliar to us. Today, I will introduce an irrational number which is ‘e’. It is pronounced as “ee” and is equal to about 2.71828182846 . It was first discovered by Jacob Bernoulli, who found it in a formula for calculating compund interest. ‘E’ can be used in probability theory, number theory and caculus. When playing a lottery with one-in-a-million odds winning, the probability that you would never win can be calculated with ‘e’ ; it’s about 1/e (less than 37%). There is another fascinating example with this number. When Google filed for its first IPO in 2004, the amount they intended to raise was billion times e.
Source : http://qz.com/362732/the-other-irrational-numbers-we-could-celebrate-instead-of-pi/
Scientific Method Bubble Gum Lab
Today our science class did a ‘Scientific Method Bubble Gum Lab’.
What brand of gum is the best at blowing bubbles and why? Support your answer with observations and your data.
Big League Crew is the best at blowing bubbles. Hubba Bubba’s average bubble size was 21.5cm and Big League Crew’s average bubble size was 26.3cm. Blowing the bubble with Big League Crew was easier to blow the biggest bubble than Hubba Bubba, becuase it is soft and that made it stretch more.
How does gum stretchability relate to bubble size?
The bubble size depends on the gum stretchability. The stretchier the gum is, the bigger the bubble will be. Comparing the two gums, Big League Crew blew the biggest bubble and also it stretched out 617cm further than Hubba Bubba.
List 5 variables that may affect the outcome of this experiment.
- Mouth temperature
- Saliva
- Chewing time
- Bubble blowing capability
- How fast the person chew in a limited time
Explain how the data you collected can be described as both qualitative and quantitative
Observing the colour, shape, smell, and texture of the gum is a qualitative data. Measuring the length of the bubble and the length of the stretched gum is quantitative.
Were SI units used in this lab? Explain.
Yes, I used centimeter to measure the diameter of the bubble and the length of the stretched gum. I also used grams to weigh the gum.
Math Football
Our goal was to make a football with spaghetti and marshmallows. We first thought that using the whole spaghetti will make the football unstable, so we decided to break the spaghetti in half. After that, we attached the spaghetti with the marshmallows and made hexagons to create a 3D figure. Unfortunately, the figure was not stable and became bigger than we thought. We broke the spaghetti in half again and made hexagons and triangles to create the football. We thought that if we use two different shapes, it will make the figure stronger. While we were making the football again, we realized that the figure was much stable this way. We only had 20 minutes to do this project so we weren’t able to finish it but here is a picture of the football we made.
By doing this project, I realized that football relates to geometry. We saw a video titled ‘Geometry of Footballs and the Cube-shaped Ball’ and I learned that most of the football that we know is made out of 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.
